Auditorium Awaits Voters' OK -- Some In Enumclaw Fear Center Could Become A Budget-Buster

-- ENUMCLAW

For nearly four years, a small group of Enumclaw citizens has been working to build a performing-arts auditorium and community center to showcase the town's young ballerinas, singers and volunteer actors.

Now their hopes are near fruition. The blueprints for an 800-seat community center complex are drawn, and construction on a patch of donated city-owned property awaits only a go-ahead from voters, who will be asked on Nov. 5 to approve a six-year, $112,000-a-year maintenance and operations levy and a 20-year, $4.9 million bond measure for the center.

The one-story complex proposed for the 1300 block of Myrtle Street, next to the public library, would contain 14,760 square feet devoted to a senior center, and nearly 16,000 square feet for the performing-arts auditorium. Half of its 800 seats will be folding seats, which can be removed to make way for banquet tables.

Though city leaders say no formal opposition has materialized, some citizens have voiced fears that the proposed community center complex could become a financial burden on the town of 7,227.

They say uncertainties in the cost of running the center could bring pressure on the city to pitch in more money.

Supporting the proposed complex are members of Enumclaw's burgeoning arts community.

Scott Green, an Enumclaw native who recently returned to his hometown after acting and directing in Los Angeles and New York, said his newly formed Enumclaw theater group rehearses in a garage for want of other places.

"We are building sets in one place, rehearsing in another. This would be wonderful," he said of the proposed complex.

Green's acting troupe, the Rainier Stage Company, got its start earlier this year in his sister-in-law's living room. Now the company includes about 50 volunteers, mostly Enumclaw residents with daytime jobs.

Other supporters of the proposed community complex say Green's troupe is just one example of those in Enumclaw's growing artistic community who could use the complex.

"There are lots of artists who have settled here," said Barbara Shane a piano teacher and owner of Enumclaw Music. Shane is a member of the Local Improvements for Enumclaw (LIFE) committee that is working to pass the proposed $4.9 million construction bond measure.

Besides the theater company, Enumclaw boasts two youth ballet companies, a community choir, which now practices in Buckley, and a yearly performing arts series sponsored by the city arts commission. The commission books local and national theater companies and concerts to perform at Enumclaw High School.

Bond-measure supporters say the high-school auditorium, which seats 350, is nearly always booked, and isn't large enough to serve the whole community.

The community-center complex, if approved, would be maintained by city money and taxes charged to property owners within the Enumclaw Parks and Recreation Service Area, a taxing district specifically created by voters to generate money to run the planned senior center-auditorium complex.

The parks service encompasses all of the Enumclaw School District except the Black Diamond area.

The Enumclaw City Council voted earlier this year to approve a contract committing the city to pay between $24,000 and $54,000 per year to operate the city senior center within the proposed complex, about equal to what the city is paying for the existing seniors program.

In 1994, the year the complex would open, the city's portion of costs would probably be about $35,000, said Enumclaw finance director Rob Hendrickson.

Cost of operating the complex is estimated at $183,000, including money from the proposed parks district maintenance and operations levy on the general election ballot.

But the cost of running the center might be more than expected, Hendrickson said. And if property values slump, grants fail to materialize or tax laws change, some fear the city might find its portion of the costs rising to keep the complex on its feet, Hendrickson said.

To avoid potentially open-ended costs to the city, the Enumclaw City Council earlier this year voted on a contract stipulating that the city can renegotiate its commitment to the center if costs are more than anticipated, or if the park district levy is not renewed by voters after six years.

"If worse comes to worse, we could shut down that part of the building (the auditorium) and just operate the senior center," Hendrickson said.

Enumclaw City Councilman George Rossman said he worries that once the complex is running there will be political pressure to keep it going with city money, even if the levy fails.

"The city would have no choice but to shoulder the whole cost," he said.

"I have mixed feelings about it. I'm afraid that down the road taxpayers would have to shoulder the costs," added Leanne Snope, president of the Enumclaw Chamber of Commerce.

The proposed maintenance and operations levy would cost property owners within the parks district 12 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation, while the bond measure is expected to cost about $46 per year on a $100,000 home.

Yearly cost of both measures would be about $58 per year on a $100,000 home.

Both measures would require a 60 percent majority to pass.